When Rosa’s first day off came, three months after her arrival at the villa, she was glad to get away from the Marchesa. Although she didn’t see the woman daily, images of the child’s heart with pins in it haunted her dreams. She had no doubt that the Marchesa was a practitioner of black magic and the words she had seen on the lapis lazuli and white stone were demonic incantations. One afternoon, while Clementina practised her scales on the piano, Rosa had searched through an anatomy book in the library. Perhaps the heart belonged to a lamb or a calf? But when she found the section on the heart, the pictures were too close to what she had seen in the jar. Where could the Marchesa have obtained the heart? Was she a graverobber? Rosa closed her eyes and tried to discover the owner of the heart by willing a vision of its origin. She could see nothing but the dead flesh floating in the jar.
She had been tempted to tell Ada and Paolina about her discovery but the atmosphere of the villa made her suspicious of everybody. They seemed like good women but she didn’t know what they truly thought of the Scarfiottis. They might be indignant that she had invaded their employer’s private quarters, and might even tell the Marchesa.
On her day off Rosa planned to visit Suor Maddalena. She had heard nothing from her despite having sent several letters. The estate manager, Signor Collodi, was driving into Florence to pick up supplies and offered to take Rosa with him. His truck wasn’t as luxurious as the Marchese’s car and reeked of oil and mouldy grass but it was better than waiting for the tram or walking.
The truck rattled and bumped down the driveway. The wildflowers on the side of the road were in full bloom. ‘The bees love the flowering mallow,’ Signor Collodi told Rosa. ‘We will have good honey this year.’
When they reached the end of the driveway, Signor Taviani came out to open the gate for them. Rosa averted her eyes. Signor Collodi worked a toothpick around his mouth while they waited. He looked as ill at ease as Rosa felt. Signor Taviani strode towards the gates, unlocked them, then remained by the gatepost until the truck had passed through. Although Rosa still didn’t look at him, she shivered, sure that he was staring at her.
When they were some distance down the road, Signor Collodi ran his fingers over his moustache and turned to Rosa. ‘My father took over Giovanni’s job so I’m uncomfortable around him. He was the big man on the estate when the Old Marchese was alive. The Marchese trusted him completely. But he had some trouble…I think the young Marchese keeps him here out of respect for his late father. Signor Taviani won’t allow anyone near his lodge. He once threw a rock at the gardener when the man tried to trim the gatehouse’s hedge.’
Rosa couldn’t feel sympathy for the gatekeeper, no matter what his troubles had been. When she thought of him, all she saw was the innocent puppy he had slaughtered.
The road levelled out and the engine ran more quietly. Signor Collodi asked Rosa how she was finding the villa. Rosa answered that she enjoyed teaching Clementina and then asked Signor Collodi about the preparations for the ball, which she knew were extensive.
‘We are all working at a pace,’ he told her. ‘They haven’t had a ball at the villa since the Marchese’s sister married. That was before the Great War.’
Rosa remembered the way the Marchesa had strutted about at Clementina’s birthday party. ‘I’m surprised to hear that,’ she said. ‘I thought the Marchesa was partial to social gatherings.’
‘I believe she is too but she prefers to host them in Paris. Perhaps she doesn’t think that Florentines are up to her standards.’
Signor Collodi brushed his hair across his pate with one hand while holding onto the wheel with the other. Rosa sensed his wounded Tuscan pride. She decided to use it to her advantage to glean more information.
‘Why has she changed her mind this time?’ she asked.
Signor Collodi shrugged. ‘Can you imagine anywhere more beautiful to have a ball than here? The villa was always lit up in the days of Nerezza Scarfiotti. Her social events were famous. Perhaps somebody has said something like that to the Marchesa and it has finally prompted her into action. After all these years.’
‘I heard Nerezza Scarfiotti was a great beauty and an accomplished musician,’ Rosa said. ‘And that she and the Marchesa didn’t get along.’
She realised that she was walking on dangerous ground, speaking so personally about her employer. She affected a casual tone, but she was digging for dark secrets and wondered if Signor Collodi would notice it.
He merely nodded. ‘I was only a boy when Nerezza Scarfiotti was alive. But I do remember sneaking a look at her one evening when she hosted a soirée. She was a magnificent woman…and not only an accomplished musician but an excellent linguist and conversationalist as well. The whole of Florence was enamoured of her.’
‘I guess it would be enough to make any woman jealous?’ Rosa fished.
Signor Collodi shrugged. ‘If you mean the Marchesa Scarfiotti…well, there might have been some jealousy but perhaps more on Nerezza Scarfiotti’s part. She was proud of her family’s name. Whoever her brother married would become mistress of their home. I’m not sure she thought the Marchesa was suitable for the role.’
A truck appeared before them on a steep part of the road and Signor Collodi had to concentrate on the gears. While he was occupied, Rosa considered what he had said. It was true that it was hard to imagine the Marchesa feeling inferior to anyone, but Nerezza had been of noble birth, beautiful and accomplished. Perhaps the Marchesa didn’t like to give parties at the villa because Florence’s elite shared Nerezza’s opinion that she wasn’t good enough to have married into the Scarfiotti family. That would explain her strutting about at Clementina’s birthday party. Perhaps the Marchesa had wanted to punish the women for their snobbery by enchanting their husbands.
Signor Collodi let Rosa out near the Ponte Santa Trinita. The sun was high in the sky and Rosa knew Suor Maddalena would have some free time before she began the afternoon’s chores. As she passed through the Piazza de’ Frescobaldi and the fountain of Bernardo Buontalenti, she smiled at the artist’s nickname, ‘good talents’, and thought how it was as improbable as her own name. The houses of the quarter had their shutters closed against the heat, and Rosa dabbed her face with her handkerchief as she made her way along the streets and lanes to her destination. When she reached the convent, she stared at the walls, never having seen the place where she had passed nearly all of her life from that aspect. She gazed up at the sky; the expanse of blue was the link between the outside world and those inside the convent.
There was a shiny bell near the convent door. Was it new? Rosa grabbed the clanger and rang it. Suor Daria, the portress nun, appeared. She didn’t recognise Rosa in her well-cut dress and new hat.
‘Ah, Rosa,’ she laughed, when the young woman gave her name. ‘How you have changed in such a short time.’
A short time? Rosa felt as though she had been away for years. Her life had changed completely.
Suor Daria ushered her into the vestibule and led her towards the parlour. The smell of incense and beeswax brought memories of prayers and schoolrooms flooding back to Rosa. The blue-and-white parlour was a jolt to her. She stared at the carved chairs and the oil painting of Jesus drinking with the sinners and remembered the faces of the parents she had seen sitting in the room while she ran errands for the nuns. How many mothers had she witnessed trying to look proud of their daughters while being devastated that their child had chosen God over family?
‘Suor Maddalena will be here in a moment,’ Suor Daria told Rosa, closing the parlour door and taking a seat next to it. The elderly nun did her best to be discreet but Rosa knew her role was to listen in on the conversation.
She heard the doors from the inner convent open, and Suor Daria pushed a buzzer to indicate that the doors to the outside world were closed. Rosa knew that only when that was ascertained would the wooden shutter behind the grille rise. Within a second it did, and Rosa found herself face to face with Suor Maddalena. She was so moved by the sight of the dear face that she had not seen in months that it took all her effort not to burst into tears.
‘How are you, my child?’ Suor Maddalena asked. ‘You seem well. Are you keeping up with your flute?’
The nun’s formality cut Rosa to the core. Suor Maddalena was thinner than when she had last seen her but otherwise appeared to be in good health. Why hadn’t she replied to any of Rosa’s letters? Rosa did her best to answer Suor Maddalena’s questions cheerfully but she felt as though her heart was in her feet. Surely not even the bars between them, nor Suor Daria’s presence, could have curbed Suor Maddalena’s motherly affection towards her. What had changed? Had another orphan taken Rosa’s place in the nun’s heart?
‘I haven’t had a chance to play my flute much, but I am hoping to practise every day again now that things are settling down into a routine,’ Rosa replied.
Her life at the convent had been governed by routine. She recalled the sense of inner restlessness she had felt then. The Badessa had been right when she said that Rosa was not suited to the religious life. Rosa bit her lip and wished that she had not come. She had happy memories of her life at the convent and now they were ruined. Her head began to swim and spots flickered before her eyes. She was about to get up and make some excuse to leave when the door behind Suor Maddalena opened and Suor Dorotea slipped a grey spotted cat onto the nun’s lap. ‘I thought Rosa might like to see Michelangelo,’ she giggled, before disappearing again.
Suor Maddalena’s face broke into a smile and her shoulders relaxed. She held the cat up to the grille. ‘They gave me Michelangelo to keep mice away from the kitchen. But the mice scare him.’
The cat rubbed against the grille. Rosa poked her fingers through the bars and scratched its chin. Suor Maddalena took Rosa’s finger and squeezed it. The gesture was an opening between them. Suddenly the resentment Rosa had been feeling melted away.
‘Thank you for your letters,’ Suor Maddalena told her. ‘I’ve kept every one. But the Badessa said that I had best not reply until you were settled into your new place. Now I see that you are, I hope you will visit often and continue to write.’
There were tears in Suor Maddalena’s eyes and Rosa felt her own eyes well up. The nuns of the Augustine order were not as strictly enclosed as the Carmelites and Poor Clares. There were certain occasions when they were allowed out of the convent. Perhaps at such a time Rosa and Suor Maddalena would be able to talk without bars between them. But that wasn’t likely to happen in the near future unless there was a war or an earthquake or some other disaster that would bring the nuns out of the convent to help the injured and sick.
Rosa told Suor Maddalena about the pleasant things at the villa and about Clementina. ‘She’s a bright girl; she learns everything so quickly.’
‘Just like you,’ said Suor Maddalena.
Rosa glanced over her shoulder and saw that Suor Daria had nodded off to sleep. She took the opportunity to slip the silver key from her pocket and show it to Suor Maddalena.
‘It was in your wrappings when you came here as a baby,’ Suor Maddalena whispered. ‘The women in my village used a charm like that to protect a child from harm.’
‘You mean witches?’ Rosa asked, her eyes wide. She was surprised Suor Maddalena wasn’t offended by the charm if that was the case.
Suor Maddalena gave a wise smile. ‘There are many ways to the Almighty, Rosa,’ she said. ‘I simply think the Catholic Church is the most direct one. We have our symbols and charms too, after all.’
Rosa didn’t know whether to be proud or shocked that the most religious person she knew was also the most open-minded. Wasn’t what Suor Maddalena was saying a kind of heresy? Ada had claimed that all women were witches. By that definition, nuns were witches too. Rosa thought about that idea for a moment: was there really such a difference between prayers and spells? Weren’t both appeals to the Almighty? She was about to tell Suor Maddalena that the cooks at the villa were streghe, but Suor Daria stirred and coughed into her hand, signalling the visit was over and that Suor Maddalena needed to attend to her chores.
‘I will come next month,’ Rosa said.
Suor Maddalena nodded. ‘I would like that.’
Out in the sunshine again, Rosa walked to the Pitti Palace and Boboli Gardens. Although she had lived in the area, she had never seen them. She stood in front of the severe façade of the enormous palace and thought about how one powerful family could fall and be replaced by another. Luca Pitti had ordered the building of the palace in 1457, to outrival the Medici family with a display of wealth and grandeur. The irony was that the cost of the building bankrupted the Pitti heirs and the palace was bought by the Medicis in 1550. The Medicis eventually fell too, as did the rulers who lived in the palace after them. Now it was an art gallery. Would the Scarfiotti family also fade to oblivion in the future? Rosa recalled her conversation with Signor Collodi. Was that why Nerezza had feared her brother marrying beneath himself?
The sun was hot and Rosa walked into the gardens and along a path lined with cypress trees until she came to an artificial lake where she sat down on a bench in the shade. A young couple were standing near a fountain. They spoke with their heads close together. Suddenly the man seized the girl and kissed her passionately. Rosa felt her toes tingle. What was it like to kiss someone, she wondered. She thought of Signor Parigi at the antiques store on Via Tornabuoni and hoped that the first man she kissed was as handsome as him.
She felt in her pocket and took out the silver key. So a witch had put the charm in her wrappings to protect her. Was it her mother? Was that why Rosa had grown up with the power to see the source of things?
She unclasped the chain around her neck that held her crucifix and added the key to it, then tucked the chain back under her collar. What was the witch trying to protect me from? she wondered, then sighed when she realised that no matter how many questions she asked herself, her origins would always be a mystery.
The night of the ball, the villa took on the appearance of a mauve-tinted underworld. The colour theme for the evening was purple and the house and the statues had been lit in the regal colour. The cut flowers were arrangements of violet roses, hyacinths, lilies and tulips, while the driveway and paths were lined with urns sprouting damson-coloured sweet peas, lavender, anemones and dahlias. The menservants were dressed in plum-coloured livery and the musicians of the thirty-six-piece string ensemble in the ballroom wore aubergine purple jackets. Round tables covered in mauve linens had been set up in the garden. On the loggia was a buffet. Extra kitchen staff had been hired to help Ada and the permanent staff prepare the extravagant dishes. Paolina had shown Rosa the menu a few weeks before. It included cold cucumber and cream soup, prawn risotto, artichoke frittata, trout basted with oil and herbs, and zucchini flowers cooked in a wafer-thin batter. Dessert was to be fragoline nelle ceste, baskets of spun sugar filled with strawberries, hazelnut mousse and mascarpone.
Clementina was permitted to attend the first hour to see the guests arrive before Rosa put her to bed. The girl couldn’t contain her excitement when people began to appear in their Rolls-Royces, Bugattis and Alfa Romeos. A few months prior to the ball, modernist lampposts had been imported from Barcelona to light the driveway and Signor Collodi had inserted tinted globes for the evening, so the guests looked as though they were appearing through a tunnel of purple light. Chauffeurs opened the doors and out spilled women in lilac taffeta gowns, men in evening suits and lavender shirts, and lap-dogs dyed violet for the occasion. When one group of guests alighted from their car, Rosa jumped at the sight of monkeys and an antelope leaping out with them. She was surprised that no-one else reacted until she realised it was an illusion. One of the women was wearing a purple cape trimmed in monkey fur, while another strode forward in antelope-skin shoes.
The Marchesa’s outfit was the most striking of all and had been made specially for her by Schiaparelli in Paris. It was a grape-coloured sequined evening gown with a fishtail hem, a low-cut back and a plunging V-neckline that left little to the imagination. Through the deep armholes Rosa could see the Marchesa’s ribs protruding through her pale skin, and the skirt of the dress was tight enough that the Marchesa’s hipbones showed through. It occurred to Rosa that the woman might be sick. She hardly ate anything as it was, but in the last few weeks before the ball she had not even come to dinner. But the guests were too mesmerised by the boa constrictor dangling around the Marchesa’s shoulders to notice her weight loss. The Marchesa had brought the snake with her from her last trip to France, where the Parisian social set were ditching their Pekineses and poodles for more exotic animals like cheetahs and lions.
‘What an amazing atmosphere you have created,’ Baroness Derveaux exclaimed to the Marchese and Marchesa. The Baroness was wearing a lilac Delphos dress with a gold hairband, while her husband had donned an embroidered suit.
‘Well, they say one’s greatest enemy is boredom and we certainly don’t want that,’ the Marchesa replied, turning to her husband.
The Marchese, looking dapper in a wine-coloured damask evening suit, smiled uneasily. He was standing with Vittorio, who was dressed in his fascist uniform. When the Baroness raised her eyebrows, Vittorio pulled back his cuff to reveal a purple watchband.
Once the guests had arrived and were being ushered to their tables, Rosa and Clementina went to retire for the night.
As they passed by the buffet table, Signor Bonizzoni touched Rosa’s arm. ‘Maria is not well this evening,’ he said. ‘I need all hands on deck. After you have put the little one to bed go and see Signora Guerrini. You’ll have to help with clearing the tables.’
Rosa, who had been hoping to play her flute when it was too noisy for anyone in the house to notice, was disappointed but had no choice but to agree to the request. She took Clementina to her room, helped her to wash and tucked her into bed. What was wrong with Maria? The nursemaid had seemed peaky lately but Rosa had put it down to the strain the ball preparations had placed on the staff. She returned downstairs where Signora Guerrini was waiting for her with a maid’s uniform.
‘Now you have come down from your ivory tower, you can see how real people earn their living,’ the housekeeper told her gruffly.
Rosa stepped into the garden as a commotion was erupting amongst the guests. A Hispano-Suiza car had pulled up with what looked like a gypsy wagon trailing behind it. The chauffeur opened the door of the car and out stepped a bald man in a Chinoiserie silk suit. He waved a flourish at the watching guests and some of them cheered. The chauffeur assisted a woman wearing a dress with puffed sleeves out of the car. She was probably no older than forty but something in her eyes made her seem hard, Rosa thought, or perhaps the chunky amethyst earrings and choker she was wearing aged her.
‘Signor Castelletti and Contessa Pignatello! How delightful!’ said the Marchesa, greeting the late arrivals with kisses on their cheeks. ‘What have you brought for us?’
The guests and servants waited with necks stretched to see what would emerge from the wagon. The back ramp was lowered and out stepped a swarthy man in a grubby hat and vest. He was holding a chain, and something large and black lumbered after him. Rosa realised it was an animal. The man said something to the beast and it rose to its full height on its back feet. Some of the guests gasped but others stepped forward to get a better view. The animal was a black bear with a moonlike crescent on its chest.
‘It’s quite tame,’ said Signor Castelletti. ‘Its mother was killed by hunters and this man raised it from a cub.’
The gypsy gave a tug on the chain, which was attached to a ring in the bear’s nose. The animal flinched but began to dance, lolling from side to side and turning. The audience clapped and cheered. The Marchesa seemed delighted but the Marchese curled his top lip with disgust. Rosa could feel the animal’s humiliation. A scene flashed before her eyes. Her toes turned icy and she realised she was standing in a forest. The vegetation was lush and moist. Voices shouted in a strange language. Russian? There was a crash through the trees and she saw a mother bear and her two cubs running. Then gunshots…
‘Where are we going to keep a bear?’ the Marchese asked his wife.
‘Oh, he will be fine in the cage I have brought,’ said Signor Castelletti, indicating the wagon. ‘That’s what he has lived in most of his life. And if one of your guests makes you unhappy tonight, you can feed him to the bear for dinner.’
The guests laughed at Signor Castelletti’s joke.
‘I think it would prefer bark and berries, you fool,’ the Marchese muttered under his breath.
Signor Collodi was called. He looked perturbed when the Marchesa instructed him to find a place for the cage and the bear somewhere in the garden. Rosa was worried about Clementina: it was in the girl’s nature to try to pat a wild animal. She looked at the bear as it passed by with its tamer. It had sores on its knees and was missing fur on its snout. It might kill a human from sheer frustration, Rosa thought. She couldn’t blame it. But someone like Clementina would be a misdirected target.
‘It’s a fine beast,’ said Vittorio, after the bear had been led away. ‘But not as efficient as a cannon or a machine gun.’
Contessa Pignatello smiled, assuming that Vittorio was joking. But Rosa thought about what Ada had said. Vittorio was having difficulty adjusting to normal life after the war and he seemed to be getting worse.
Signor Castelletti and his companion were welcomed by the guests and Signor Bonizzoni was called to direct them to their table. Before Signor Castelletti departed, he leaned towards the Marchese and whispered loud enough for Rosa to hear, ‘What do you think of my companion?’
‘She’s very charming,’ answered the Marchese politely.
Signor Castelletti laughed. ‘Young and beautiful she may not be, but when a rich and lonely woman makes herself available to be used, it would be most unchivalrous of me not to oblige, don’t you agree?’
The Marchese stiffened with what Rosa guessed was revulsion and she couldn’t blame him. She turned away and began collecting used dishes from those tables whose guests had entered the ballroom. She caught Baron Derveaux staring at her but pretended not to notice.
‘What’s your fascination with that girl?’ the Baroness asked her husband. ‘Are you looking for a young lover? We agreed that neither of us was to take another until we were both over fifty.’
The Baron laughed at his wife’s joke then said something in response, which Rosa didn’t hear. The ensemble began to play a Viennese waltz and many more guests left their tables for the ballroom. Rosa moved around the empty tables, clearing them of cutlery and china. Another maid came to help her and they worked together.
‘How is Maria?’ the maid asked her.
‘I don’t know,’ said Rosa. ‘I didn’t see her.’
The maid glanced towards where the Marchese and Vittorio were in conversation. ‘Stupid fool. Did she think he would marry her?’
‘What do you mean?’ Rosa asked.
The maid raised her eyebrow. ‘Maria has a lover,’ she whispered. ‘Surely you must have noticed? When you turn around to speak to her and she’s not there, you can be sure she’s snuck off to be with him.’
Rosa was dumbfounded. Maria was running around with the Marchese? She couldn’t believe her employer would behave that way with his daughter’s nursemaid! Then she recalled the gossip of the women in the millinery shop and their comments about why the previous nursemaid had left.
‘Signorina Bellocchi, could you help with the buffet?’ Signor Bonizzoni called to Rosa.
Rosa put the used cutlery on a trolley and hurried to the loggia where she began removing empty platters so the menservants could replace them with new ones. The Marchesa was leaning against a column talking with a plump woman who was holding a papillon spaniel with a mauve ribbon around its neck.
‘If you are from Milan you must know the Trivulzio family,’ the woman said.
The Marchesa shrugged. The noncommittal gesture might have meant that she didn’t know the family or that she did know them but didn’t think highly of them. The woman was taken aback but continued on, perhaps hoping to impress the Marchesa.
‘They have a butler,’ she said, ‘who runs the tightest ship. He can sniff out a speck of dust from yards away. But he is blind. Completely blind. Yet he is the best butler you could imagine. And, as I’m sure you know, good butlers are not so easy to find. They must know everything about the family but never breathe a word.’
The woman laughed and patted the Marchesa’s arm. The Marchesa shrank back against the column. Rosa assumed she was cringing because of the woman’s reference to the butler’s ‘deformity’. She wondered what the woman would think if she knew that the Marchesa had ordered a puppy destroyed simply because it had a splodge on its nose.
On her way to the kitchen, Rosa overheard Contessa Pignatello talking with Baroness Derveaux.
‘The Marchese is an egotist but charming. I can’t say so much for his wife. She’s as cold as a fish,’ the Contessa said.
The Baroness came to the Marchesa’s defence. ‘Oh, I have pity for her. I believe her father was a powerful and sometimes cruel man. And do you know what her mother was once heard to say? “A wise woman doesn’t give anyone anything. Not even sympathy.” How could Luisa have grown up any other way but to be standoffish? I believe under that hard exterior there is a fine human being.’
Rosa was surprised by the Baroness’s words. Either she was generous in attributing good qualities to people whether they deserved them or not, or she knew something about the Marchesa that nobody else did. She certainly seemed to be the Marchesa’s only true supporter.
The ensemble stopped playing and the guests gathered around the sides of the ballroom. Rosa was blocked from the kitchen and had no choice but to pause for a moment too. Baron Derveaux had seated himself at the Bösendorfer piano and indicated to the musicians that he intended to play something. He had been smoking a cigarette and placed it, still smouldering, on the lid of the piano. He would have to remove it soon otherwise it would damage the wood. Rosa cringed; as a musician she would never treat an instrument with such irreverence. The Marchesa followed the other guests into the ballroom. When she saw the Baron at the piano and the cigarette on the lid, a look passed over her face that made Rosa shiver. Her eyes narrowed as if she intended kill him. But why was the Marchesa reacting that way? Shouldn’t she be pleased? The Bösendorfer had belonged to her rival.
The guests fell silent in anticipation of being entertained by the Baron. The Marchesa wove her way between them, her spine arched and her eyes like slits.
‘What will you play?’ Signor Castelletti shouted to the Baron.
The Marchesa slipped through the guests and made a line straight for the piano. The Baron didn’t see her coming. He brought his hands over the keyboard and hit the first chord. The piano was out of tune. The guests burst into laughter. The Baron smiled but was put out at having his moment of fun thwarted.
‘Luisa,’ he said, picking up his cigarette just as the Marchesa reached for it. ‘Has no-one tuned this thing in years?’
‘Nobody plays it,’ she said.
‘One day Clementina might,’ said the Baron, missing the Marchesa’s meaning. She was giving a warning, not making a statement. Rosa sensed it. For a moment she saw something: a flash of light; a sheet of music. But no vision came.
‘We haven’t heard truly fine music in Fiesole since Nerezza passed away,’ said one elderly man.
The guests murmured amongst themselves.
‘Fiesole? I haven’t heard such playing anywhere. Not in Paris nor Vienna,’ exclaimed a matronly woman.
The Marchesa pursed her lips. Rosa could almost see the goose bumps prickling the woman’s skin. Rosa had gathered from her conversation with Signor Collodi that this party was meant to outshine those hosted by Nerezza, not be compared to them.
‘Well, there will only ever be one Nerezza,’ said Baron Derveaux, shrugging his shoulders. ‘That sort of woman comes once a century.’
The Marchesa’s eyes flared. Rosa could only imagine what she was thinking. The guests could not be aware of how much rivalry had existed between the women otherwise they would have been more careful not to insult their hostess. Baroness Derveaux and the Marchese, who was trying to make his way through the guests towards his wife, seemed to be the only two people besides Rosa who had noticed the Marchesa’s agitation. The Baroness took her husband’s arm and ushered him away to the garden.
‘Come and see what they have done with the fountain. It’s truly magnificent,’ she said.
The Marchese indicated for the ensemble to play and entreated his guests to move to the dance floor once again. He then took the Marchesa’s arm. It was the first time Rosa had seen him touch her with any sort of tenderness.
‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Our guests expect us to dance.’
Once the guests took to the dance floor again, Rosa was able to manoeuvre through them to the kitchen. She sensed that there was a lot riding on the success of the evening for the Marchesa, and that nothing had better ruin it.
Before dessert was served, the Marchese called the guests together and announced that a scavenger hunt had been arranged. A flurry of excitement rushed through the gathering. There was no-one present who was less than twenty years of age, but the guests hopped and skipped into their groups with all the excitement of children at a birthday party. A leader was chosen for each team and Signor Bonizzoni handed them an envelope.
‘You have one hour to return here,’ the Marchese said, indicating an hourglass that Signor Bonizzoni was about to turn. ‘The winners will each get a prize but the losers will have to perform a dare of the winners’ choosing.’
The threat brought bursts of laughter and exclamations from the guests. The men checked their watches while the women patted their flushed faces with handkerchiefs. The atmosphere of the party had shifted from one of refinement to one of gay abandon. Signor Bonizzoni turned the glass and the guests scattered like marbles, running into the garden to count the statues or the number of windows on the upper storey. Rosa had never seen adults behave that way.
Signor Bonizzoni clapped his hands and the servants, including Rosa, hurried about the tables, changing any soiled cloths and napkins or melted candles and resetting the tables for dessert.
‘They’ll be gone an hour,’ said the maid helping Rosa with the cutlery. ‘We should finish this task quickly and then put our feet up for a bit. It’s been non-stop this evening.’
Rosa was about to agree with her when a woman’s scream pierced the air. The cry was one of such terror that people came rushing from all over the villa to see what had happened. Rosa’s first thought was that somebody had got too close to the bear but then she realised the sound had come from the direction of the driveway. The Marchese shouted to Signor Collodi to grab his gun. It was unlikely but possible that a wolf had wandered onto the property. There were wild boars in the region but they tended to avoid human contact. Rosa thought of witches, but then reminded herself that neither Ada nor Suor Maddalena thought witches were evil. The other guests didn’t wait to consider the possibilities; they charged towards the sound, oblivious to any danger.
‘Signorina Bellocchi, come with me,’ said the Marchese, grabbing Rosa’s arm and moving in the direction of the driveway. ‘In case the woman is in need of female assistance.’
The Marchese and Rosa managed to overtake the other guests. Baron Derveaux, whose team had been busy sketching the coat of arms in the foyer, caught up with the Marchese. ‘The women should stay back,’ he said. ‘There may be a ravisher in the woods.’
The Marchese stopped and related what the Baron had said. Reluctantly the women turned back. Signor Collodi appeared with his gun.
‘What was the question in this direction?’ the Marchese asked him.
‘A very simple one. To count the number of lampposts before the lion statues.’
Rosa recalled that the statues were only a short way down the drive, where the wall ended. They turned a bend and found one of the party’s teams gathered around a lamppost, staring at something like people in a trance. A woman was lying in a faint on the ground, with another woman fanning her. An older man was dry-retching into the bushes.
Signor Castelletti, who had been part of the group, rushed towards the Marchese. ‘Tell the others to stay back. It’s horrible! Too horrible!’
The Marchese called to his guests that they had best return to the villa. Some of them did, but many continued on, intrigued by what ghoulish sight might await them. Rosa ran towards the prostrate woman to see if she could be of assistance. But before she reached her, the huddle moved aside to let the Marchese through and she glimpsed something hanging from the lamppost. She moved a step forward then stopped. The purple light had muted the object. What on earth…? Rosa suddenly realised what it was and reeled back. A dead man was dangling from a rope.
The Marchesa arrived in her car. She had driven herself and slammed the door when she got out. The glare of the headlights illuminated the victim’s swollen face, which had previously been in the shadows. New cries of horror rose from the onlookers at the sight of the man’s blue tongue and bulging eyes.
‘Who is it?’ Baron Derveaux asked.
‘I’m not sure,’ said the Marchese.
Rosa turned to the Marchesa. The woman’s face was twitching; it was the first time Rosa had seen her genuinely shocked. The Marchesa’s eyes met Rosa’s and she glowered. At that moment Rosa realised who the dead man was. It was the man with the cowlick.